The company is partnering with carbon capture company LanzaTech to develop a scaled solution for recycling end-of-life tires.
Bridgestone Americas, a tire manufacturer based in Nashville, Tennessee, announced an exclusive partnership with carbon capture and transformation (CCT) company, LanzaTech NZ Inc., Skokie, Illinois, to address end-of-life tire waste. The companies say they plan to co-develop the first dedicated end-of-life tire recycling process through LanzaTech's proprietary CCT technology.
According to the Tire Industry Project, more than 1 billion tires globally reach the end of their useful service life each year. Bridgestone and LanzaTech will work to address this by turning end-of-life tires into new materials, including sustainable synthetic rubber that does not rely on petrochemicals.
"We are excited to join forces with LanzaTech to co-create a more sustainable pathway for end-of-life tires," says Paolo Ferrari, president and CEO of Bridgestone Americas. "The steps we take today are determining the health of our planet for future generations. We are determined to meet the moment with sustainable innovation that transforms the way tires are made and promotes end-to-end material circularity."
Bridgestone and LanzaTech say they plan to develop a new business model that will create a postconsumer waste management strategy for end-of-life tires, while also driving increased adoption of sustainably sourced chemicals for commercial applications. Applying LanzaTech's carbon capture and gas fermentation process to end-of-life tires yields sustainably produced chemicals such as ethanol that can be converted to materials such as polyethylene terephthalate for packaging, polyester yarn and surfactants used in consumer home goods like laundry detergent.
In addition, Bridgestone and LanzaTech will explore opportunities to co-develop proprietary microbe technology to produce more efficient pathways to produce butadiene, a key ingredient in new tire production.
"LanzaTech and Bridgestone are working together to find solutions to some of our world's greatest challenges," says Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech. "We have already proven that we can convert unrecyclable, unsorted municipal solid waste to ethanol and then make products we use in our daily lives. With our partnership with Bridgestone, we are developing a circular pathway to use tires to make tires. This partnership exemplifies what we call a post pollution future."
Bridgestone says it aims to achieve carbon neutrality and make tires from 100 percent renewable materials by 2050. The company is researching various solutions to support the recycling of materials from end-of-life tires and promote the replacement of nonrenewable materials such as oil, silica and virgin carbon black in new tires.
Singapore-based Crust and its founder Travin Singh are repurposing food byproducts in a tasty way for beer drinkers.
Collecting food scraps from restaurants and byproducts from food processing facilities and diverting them from landfills has gained traction around the world. While outcomes as animal feed or as anaerobic digestion (AD) feedstock may be most common, Travin Singh of Singapore has blazed a different trail.
Singh founded the Crust Group there in 2018 to explore ways to convert surplus food, food scraps and byproducts into craft beer. Crust Group now operates in Singapore and Japan, and offers a non-alcoholic beverages under its Crop brand.
Singh will be speaking at the April CleanEnviro Summit Singapore (CESG) 2022 conference as part of its Resource Sustainability track. The organizers of the CESG offered Waste Today senior editor Brian Taylor a chance to interview Singh about his four-year-old company.
Waste Today (WT): When and how did the idea of upcycling surplus ingredients the Crust Group way take hold with you?
Travin Singh (TS): Back in 2018, I wanted to start a business, but did not want to just start a company with the sole purpose of earning money. I wanted to build a value-based company that gained profit but was mostly about finding solutions; kind of a reference for how businesses would be done in the future. I wanted to show people that money is a byproduct of doing the right things in the right way. I grew up with the mentality to not waste food. Since young, my mum will cook for us and if we do not finish the food on the day itself, she will incorporate it into something new tomorrow. That is the ideology in terms of starting Crust, creating a value-based company: developing value-based products that reduce food waste.
WT: To what extent do you find some potential Crust beverage drinkers are “turned off” by the idea of beer made from surplus materials? How do you overcome such objections?
TS: When we first launched, I think people didn’t totally understand what we were doing. They confused food waste and food loss and thought that we were taking food that had been consumed or used by others and turning it into beer. Actually, we were taking surplus ingredients that hadn’t been used or sold. Now that we are three years in the market, more people understood what we are doing through educating them about concepts such as upcycling, and perceptions have changed.
WT: How has the attempt to use fruit flavors in the Crop line of products been accepted?
TS: Crop is our line of functional and health-focused non-alcoholic beverages that contain immunity-boosting parabiotics. The drinks are made from fruit and vegetable waste and loss such as fruit peels, seeds and rinds. People were very supportive of the idea of upcycling fruit peels, “ugly” fruits into new drinks. Prior to the official launch, we gave out samples and gathered feedback from our internal network as well as the public. We made multiple changes following multiple rounds of feedback. In subsequent trial batches we saw marked improvement and general likeability of the products. With the improved recipe and new batch of products, we are confident that the market will be supportive towards this new line.
WT: How do you view the expansion opportunities for the Crust Group beyond Singapore?
TS: We expanded to Japan at the start of 2021. Crust Lager was our first product launched in Japan and it is made from surplus rice and surplus bread from a local bread manufacturer. We aim to scale and expand to different markets, focusing on the Asia markets first, and then to other parts of the world. Crust will continue to produce beverages that are customized to the local taste buds using surplus ingredients from the local market eventually. Crust Group will help different markets reduce their own food loss and food wastage as a Singapore entity by creating products customized to the local market.
WT: What Crust Group product do you recommend for those who want to try their first sample?
TS: The way we built our product range is that there is a beer for everybody. It is hard for me to recommend a single product because everyone looks for something different in a beer. For instance, some prefer beers that are more fruity, some prefer for beers to be hoppier etc. But our Toasted Lager has been one of our more popular products so far.
The county is making $1.8 million available to increase recycling and waste diversion.
The King County Solid Waste Division in Washington is offering grants to local companies or organizations for recycling, reuse and waste reduction projects in the Puget Sound region. The county says it will offer between $20,000 and $300,000 per project through the pilot program.
“In local government, we have these big goals, but we don't have all [the] resources to ensure that we reach those goals,” says Emily Coleman, the circular organics program manager of the King County Solid Waste Division. “We feel that it's important to support organizations that are looking to support us and our goals in this space and really push it forward.”
The application process launched a few weeks ago, and those interested have until May 6 to apply. Coleman says businesses, nonprofits and local organizations are eligible for the grants.
The county is interested in projects that increase diversion and prevent materials from ending up in the landfill. Projects could range from improving education, collection processes or supporting end markets for recycled material. The projects also should have benefits that outweigh costs and that help mitigate the impacts of climate change while benefiting the economy.
“We're hoping that the businesses and organizations that apply are thinking about things in a holistic view,” Coleman says. “We want businesses and organizations thinking through things like environmental impacts like greenhouse gas emissions, thinking through equity considerations, thinking about scalability and the growth opportunities within these projects.”
According to information provided by the county, more than 70 percent of the items sent to the Cedar Hills Regional Landfill could have been repurposed. Coleman says the three sources of material the county hopes to increase diversion of are plastic film, paper and organics.
The program is part of the county’s Re+ program. The program is King County's road map for a healthy environment and economy by reinventing its system of waste management. The county says its goal is to minimize waste by keeping valuable materials in use and out of the landfill. Coleman says the county has a zero-waste of materials goal by 2030.
“We generate about,1.8 million tons and about a million of that is recycled and composted,” Coleman says. “However, about seven to 800,000 is going to our landfill. We have a strong recycling rate, we have a strong composting system here in the region, and we're very fortunate to have that. But we think we can do better. We want to make sure that we're not just satisfied with what we've done, that we can strive toward that zero waste of materials goal.”
When fully operational, the facility is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 40,000 tons annually.
American Organic Energy (AOE), headquartered in Westbury, New York, has announced the beginning of construction for its new anaerobic digestion facility. The upcoming facility—to be built in Yaphank, New York—will transform Long Island’s food waste into convertible energy, vehicle fuel, fertilizer and nutrient-rich water.
“This project is a culmination of years of collaborative efforts on the part of the local community, environmental advocates, government officials and private industry,” says Charles Vigliotti, the company’s CEO, in a statement. “It represents the best of what public/private cooperation looks like and will put Long Island center stage in designing a sustainable future.”
As reported by the Long Island Business News, Vigliotti has long worked in Long Island’s green economy, having also co-founded Long Island Compost. AOE has partnered with energy and engineering firms with the aim to “significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing both the number of diesel transport vehicles and the volume of organic waste currently disposed of in landfills,” according to a press release about the groundbreaking.
When fully operational, the facility is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 40,000 tons annually, produce 2.0 MW of electricity and approximately 1.9 million diesel gallons equivalent of compressed natural gas, according to the press release.
The new facility would “change the way we manage food waste on Long Island,” says Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, in a statement.
Esposito adds that New York “generates more than 4 million tons of food waste” each year. By transforming food scraps into "a resource and non a waste product,” she believes the facility is more beneficial than traditional disposal methods.
She also points out that with the Brookhaven Landfill expected to close in two years, “there is no plan for waste disposal on Long Island after 2024,” she says.
The CGF's Coalition of Action on Plastic Waste has published an independent scientific study that it says demonstates that chemical recycling could reduce the climate impact of plastic compared with waste-to-energy incineration.
The Consumer Goods Forum's (CGF) Plastic Waste Coalition of Action has published "Chemical Recycling in a Circular Economy for Plastics," a paper that encourages the development of new plastics recycling technologies that meet six key principles for credible, safe and environmentally sound development. In support of this position paper, the coalition also has published an independent life cycle assessment (LCA) study that shows the chemical recycling of hard-to-recycle plastic could reduce the climate impact of plastic when compared with waste-to-energy incineration.
Guided by the global commitment led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and in line with the newly announced UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution, the coalition says it is committed to the growth of the circular economy, having launched its full set of Golden Design Rules for plastic packaging and developing a framework for extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs. The coalition says it also is working to encourage recycling innovation, including chemical recycling to complement the growing mechanical recycling capacity.
In the area of chemical recycling, the coalition says it has established a set of principles for the safe scaling of pyrolysis-based chemical recycling. According to the paper it has released, chemical recycling could increase packaging recycling rates, enabling recyclability targets to be met, specifically for hard-to-recycle plastics, such as postconsumer flexible film. To ensure that chemical recycling is developed and operated under “credible, safe and environmentally sound conditions,” the paper outlines what the coalition says are six key principles related to the technology’s complementarity with mechanical recycling, material traceability, process yields and environmental impact, health and safety and claims.
CGF members say they welcome feedback and engagement on this study and its broader work within the Plastic Waste Coalition of Action.
Barry Parkin, chief sustainability officer of Mars Inc. says, "Chemical recycling is a critical complement to mechanical recycling as it will allow large quantities of flexible packaging to be recycled into food-grade packaging. This study demonstrates that chemical recycling has a significantly lower carbon footprint than the current end of life of flexible packaging."
"As we continue to reduce the use of virgin plastic, new technologies such as chemical recycling can help drive up recycling rates and increase the availability of food-grade recycled materials,” Colin Kerr, packaging director, Unilever, adds. “The principles and life cycle assessment work from The Consumer Goods Forum is key to ensuring this can happen in a safe and environmentally sound way."
Llorenç Milà i Canals, head of the Life Cycle Initiative Secretariat, United Nations Environmental Programme, says, "It is crucial to consider all potential environmental impacts across the life cycle of production and consumption systems when assessing technologies such as chemical recycling of plastics. A specific challenge with relatively new technologies is including the chemical composition of discharges, emissions and wastes from facilities, along with the need for additional pollution control equipment and management; these should form part of the assessment. Life cycle assessment is the standardized tool to do just that, assuring the necessary scrutiny by experts and interested parties; the Consumer Goods Forum has initiated a very useful process to shed light on many of these aspects in this report.”
"Recognizing that reduction and reuse of packaging should be prioritized, and recognizing the limitations of the technology, the paper puts forward the industries' position on what role pyrolysis CR could play in the transition to a circular economy for plastics and what key principles and boundary conditions it should adhere to,” Sander Defruyt, lead, New Plastics Economy, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, adds.
The coalition commissioned Chicago-based Sphera to do an independent study looking at the topic of climate change impact. The study was peer-reviewed throughout the process by a panel of experts from U.N. Environmental Programme, Northwestern University and Eunomia. The study provides a life cycle impact assessment and compares conventional plastics produced from fossil fuels and incinerated at end of life with chemically recycled plastic in a circular system.
The study's findings demonstrate that chemical recycling of hard-to-recycle mixed plastic waste could reduce the climate impact of plastic when compared with waste-to-energy incineration. Specifically, the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of flexible consumer packaging made from postuse plastic through pyrolysis-based chemical recycling and recycled at end of life is 43 percent lower than plastic films manufactured from fossil fuels and disposed of through incineration at end of life.
Additional details on the findings of the LCA can be found in the Technical Report and the Non-Technical Summary.
However, some nongovernmental organizations have expressed skepticism about chemical recycling, including GAIA (Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives), Berkeley, California, particularly when the technology is used to produce fuels. The organization says these technologies are “falsely marketed as circular, climate-friendly and sustainable” and present “environmental and health drawbacks” that “outweigh any supposed benefits” because they in part produce poor-quality fuels, exacerbate climate change, produce toxic air emissions and byproducts and perpetuate overproduction of plastic.
GAIA refers to chemical recycling as “an industry greenwash term used to refer to various plastic-to-fuel and plastic-to-plastic technologies,” adding, “Although these processes aim to turn plastic into liquids or gases which could be used to make new plastic, the end products are usually burned in practice. Technological variants of this process include pyrolysis, solvolysis and depolymerization. However, regardless of the label, the technology is plastic-to-fuel, aka plastic incineration, if the end products are burned.”